Arooj Aftab

In the organizer's words:

The word "transformative" is perhaps not forceful enough to adequately describe the multi-faceted creative artist Arooj Aftab. Rooted in a constellation of insurmountable boundaries and elegant refusals, she moves deftly against the weight of time and convention, honoring multiple traditions while refusing to be subsumed by any one of them alone. The artist defies categorical definition through an extensive repertoire of study and knowledge that includes music production and recording techniques and a wide-ranging vocal practice that moves with sophisticated intent in the worlds of jazz, South Asian classical music, pop and blues. With and from these vibrant, mercurial forms, Aftab works to shape what she admiringly refers to as "global soul". She is its erudite scribe and dark chanteuse, successfully convincing audiences around the world that genre definitions are a lie, but that she herself should be believed.

The full extent of Arooj Aftab's musical legacy is evident in her two most recent albums: the Grammynominated "masterclass in spatial sound" Love in Exile (Verve, 2023), which she co-created with Vijay Iyer and Shahzad Ismaily, and her fourth solo project, the incandescent Night Reign (Verve, 2024). Both works are spectacles of her skill, and Aftab guards all their supple elements tenderly and skillfully like priceless heirlooms. Her role models, from Sufi poets to iconic jazz singers, have proven to her that "there was no blueprint for what I wanted to do", and it is her willingness to take risks and non-conformity that has earned Aftab her place at the forefront of the creative music scene. Since 2021, she has given rousing performances at major concerts and internationally renowned festivals such as the Newport Jazz Festival, Coachella, Roskilde Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Glastonbury and twice on NPR's Tiny Desk Series, and has been celebrated by The New York Times, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and Time Magazine; Arooj Aftab was honored with a Grammy for "Mohabbat" in the Best Global Music Performance category and a nomination for Best New Artist for her outstanding third album "Vulture Prince" (Verve/New Amsterdam, 2021). She also received two nominations for "Love in Exile" and was selected as a 2023 United States Artists Fellow and recipient of the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Music.

Before and behind Aftab's many accolades is the instrument itself, her covetable voice, which she describes as an alchemy of "displacement, reinvention, exile, chaos, feminism and the crazy web of love, loss and tragedy in the world". The calm in her voice is not comfort or approval, but a persistent and expectant intensity that burns the lyrics into countless lives in as many countries. Arooj Aftab was herself the subject of various migrations and spent her teenage years in Lahore, Pakistan, a city of many gardens and also the birthplace of her music-loving parents. Her viral cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", sung at the age of eighteen, helped her to study jazz at Berklee College of Music in Boston, while Brooklyn, New York, was to be her next and most fertile workshop for the creation of her "world-building" music. Night Reign is both a living reflection of that music and its future, which lies in the footsteps of that city. There, Aftab works with some of the most impressive musicians of our time, drawing various concentric circles of collaboration that reflect back to her a cosmic level of musical craft and invention.

Arooj Aftab enchants with her passionate attention to the everyday and her ability to indelibly shape its stratospheric poetry. She dares to express her affection from the stage, a profoundly musical achievement that shows not only how to do it, but why to do it. Emboldened by her fearlessness and exquisite imagination, others rally and play along to prove that she is exactly who and where she belongs. "For once, I'm not fighting," she says with her typical candor. "I've already won."

Price information:

30 - 33€ plus fee